Yesterday, at a hearing at the same court to recover his ill-gotten gains the CPS asked for just £14,380, despite the racket raking in millions of pounds.

Presiding Judge Peter Ross reacted with indignation and said: “This is a man through whose hands millions of pounds of cocaine went.

“This is a man who on the face of the evidence I heard in the trial has profited massively from what was an enormous drugs operation.

“He was a man who was organising what was undoubtedly an organised criminal group, receiving the cocaine at the point of importation, managing its wholesale distribution across the UK to other significant organised criminal groups.

“The idea that the only available assets are under £14,500 is simply risible.”

Judge Ross also said that the case could have been eligible for a ‘hidden assets’ application whereby prosecutors believe he has more money available but this has been ‘hidden.’

In response prosecutors on behalf of the CPS said that checks had been made in Albania and in the UK and given the available evidence the decision was taken not to pursue a hidden assets case and to seek just over £14,000 instead.

Judge Ross went on: “I don’t know who made this choice, made this decision, but whilst I have to make the order, and it seems to me I have no alternative, it should not be taken by the public as an indication that I approve of this.

“His sentence reflected the significant role, the huge role, he had. He was at the top of this organised crime group in the UK.

“I imagine that the defence are delighted to agree to this order.”

Judge Ross formally declared that the total benefit from criminal activity was £701,680 and that a total of £14,380 could be confiscated as ill-gotten gains.

Mema was given three months to pay the monies and to allow for the auctioning of his Rolex watch.

If he defaults on the cash owed he will serve a further three years and six months in prison to run consecutive to his current jail term of 25 years.

During Mema's original trial which was held at Oxford Crown Court in October it was revealed that he had been at the helm of a country-wide drugs plot between June 1, 2016, and December 2, 2016.

Mema had denied any involvement in the drugs ring but a jury took nine hours and 12 minutes to find him guilty by a majority to two counts of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

After the arrest of one of his co-conspirators - Mema's subordinate Khalad Uddin, officers found hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash at his Scholars Mews apartment as well as at Little Brewery Street in Oxford.

Sentencing at the time Judge Peter Ross, who presided over the two-month case, said that Mema had run a 'sophisticated and organised' gang.

He said: "The organisation that you headed supplied millions of pounds worth of cocaine around the UK.

"It was an organisation run on business lines.

"You are a rarity, you are the top man when it comes to this organised crime operation.

"No one reading the newspapers, watching the television news can be in any doubt criminal enterprises such as yours generate violence, serious violence, involving the use of guns and knives."

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